A group of "concerned Oregonians" started gathering signatures because they wanted to place a referendum on this November's ballot requiring a statewide vote on the two laws.
They've now officially failed. H/t to Marshall Collins over at BlueOregon...
On June 25, 2008 the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 passed by a whopping 402-17 vote in the House. Sometime in September, the full Senate is expected to begin floor action on the Senate bill (S.3406). It currently enjoys the sponsorship of 65 Senators, and the endorsement of a wide variety of business and disability community organizations, so it's widely expected to pass, but your help is needed to provide just that little bit of insurance so that the opportunities and protections intended by Congress in the original ADA are certain to be restored to persons with disablities. We need to pass this with a veto-proof majority!
After the fold, there's an action request (the links are toward the bottom of the diary) as well as background information on why it's so important for the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) to pass...
Note: I'm posting this quite late - it's nearly 2AM! - and won't be able to stay awake to respond right now to any comments. So here's a shameless pitch: please, my fellow night owls, help me out and rec this diary up, so that people may have a chance to see it in the morning. It's not campaign-related, but it's such an important issue!
I received this e-mail via an online support group to which I subscribe. I have heard of this 'movie' but had no idea about the denigration of physically and mentally challenged people. I have absolutley no reason to suspect New Jersey ARC (Association of Retarded Citizens) of making this up (see their message below). If what they say is accurate then this movie is a moral outrage.
I have a 3 yr old son with some physical and sensory challenges and we know plenty of people who care and support children with some mental difficulties. Anyone who has or knows such a child is well aware that society often forgets this segment (Bush - No Child Left Behind), or deliberatly goes out their way to poke fun at them. Ben Stiller is a two bit actor at best but is old enough to know better - unless he himself has some mental challenges?
Just wanted people to be aware. Tell-a-Friend Email Campaign – Please forward to everyone you know and ask them to spread the word!
Crossposted on Texas Campaign 2008 By Faith Chatham - DFWRCC - Aug. 10, 2008 "Overwhelmed", "chaotic", and "not complying with the election code or Texas Democratic Party Rules" is how many Texas Democratic Precinct and Senatorial Convention attendees describe the Texas Two-Step. Texas is the only state to apportion part (2/3) of their national presidential pledged delegates by the results of the Democratic Primary and the rest (1/3) by sign-ins at precinct convention caucuses.
This year 2.8 Texans voted in the Democratic Primary (2,874,986) for every registered voter who attended a Democratic Precinct Convention/Caucus. Only 1,000,000 Texans signed-in at Precinct Conventions to select the remaining 1/3 of the delegates.
Florida State Representative Darryl Rouson has been caught making homophobic comments in a video posted on YouTube. He represents a gerrymandered district with a 3.5 to 1 Democratic voter registration advantage and switched from Republican to Democrat just to run for a seat in a recent special election.
His opponent in the August 26th primary is the second-place finisher in the special election, Rev. Charles McKenzie. (The third-place finisher who received 26% of the vote has endorsed McKenzie.) Although many black ministers are not progressive on gay issues, McKenzie has been endorsed by the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats and Equality Florida PAC. You can view his web site at http://www.mckenzie2008.com and his online contribution link is http://www.mckenzie2008.com/...
The world's largest corporation fears that workers will be able to unionize and seek better working conditions in the event that Barack Obama wins the presidency in November. Wal-Mart forced store managers and department supervisors to attend mandatory meetings in order to mobilize them against the Democratic candidate. The retail giant used fear tactics in the meetings, telling their managers that workers would be forced to pay huge union dues while receiving nothing in return. They also claimed that large numbers of jobs would be lost because unionization would cause labor costs to rise. It's really no wonder that Wal-Mart would be frightened of a unified, mobilized and proactive workforce, considering the corporation minimizes employee costs in order to increase its profits. They do that through low pay, discriminatory promotions, dehumanizing scheduling and poor benefits.
Are all forms of discrimination the same? Not so much so for the folks over at The Volokh Conspiracy. According to those folks, it would be, you know, a bad thing - or, rather, "quite wrong" - if I were fired because I was a lesbian, but, eh, not too big of a deal. HOWEVER! Were I to be fired for being a Woman, well then, Volokh would consider that "Much More Serious!"
Imagine a world in which SCHOOLS have all the resources they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
I remember seeing this as a poster and bumper stickers when I was growing up.
My Mom often baked for these bake sales, as all moms seem to do. We'd raise a couple hundred, maybe, but never enough to rehab the playground or buy books for an entire grade, not in my rural Ohio school district. However, today, I'm encouraged that if anyone can make sure that schools can get the resources they need, we're looking at the leadership that can get this done.
UPDATE
This diary is NOT about NCLB, it is about a major change in leadership and the promise that change holds for the future.
Dana Milbank at the WaPo delivers a stunning and accurate smackdown to the misguided, misleading and unhinged Elaine Donnelly of The Center for Military Readiness, who testified at yesterday's House Armed Services personnel subcommittee hearing on the law known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.
"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.
Equality takes another step forward. The American people, 3 to 1, oppose discriminating against gays in the U.S. military, according to the Washington Post.
Seventy-five percent of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62 percent in early 2001 and 44 percent in 1993.
Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike now believe it is acceptable for openly gay people to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Shortly after he took office in 1993, Clinton faced strong resistance to his campaign pledge to lift the military’s ban on allowing gay people to enlist. At that time, 67 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of conservatives opposed the idea. A majority of independents, 56 percent, and 45 percent of Democrats also opposed changing the policy.
I just read the third edition of the WGLB news. I started this as a comment on that diary, but decided to make it a diary of my own, because I wanted to speak to people who might not read the other diary.
I am straight. I have my share of Gay, Lesbian, and Bi friends, coworkers, and acquaintences, but I have never been called a derogatory name or otherwise discriminated against because of my sexual identity. Todays edition of the news is about AIDS, and I have been lucky enough never to have a close friend suffer from AIDS.
Nonetheless, as President Kennedy told the residents of Berlin, and the rest of the world during the cold war, what happens to you, happens to me. We are all affected by so called GLBT issues.
Wal-Mart is at it again. According to Bloomberg.com, Wal-Mart has, once again, been wantonly disrespecting its disabled employees, and they're losing lawsuits to prove it. Patrick Brady, who has cerebral palsy, was hired in 2002 as a Pharmacy Clerk at the Centereach, New York Wal-Mart.
[He was] transferred on his second day to a job picking up garbage and collecting shopping carts in the parking lot because a manager said he was too slow.
Discrimination against people who suffer from Gender Identity Disorder (GID), that is, transgendered people, is a hot legal topic these days. Title VII does not expressly protect them and expressly prohibits protecting homosexuals. As a result, the courts and the legal theories are all over the place when it comes to dealing with transgender discrimination. The basic legal conflict comes down to a question whether discrimination based on transgender status is discrimination "on the basis of sex" - something that is illegal under Title VII - or whether, since Congress has not spoken by adding protections based on gender identity while amending Title VII to make other changes, means it does not intend to protect GID.
A June 26 congressional hearing covered many of these issues.
When George W Bush introduced his plan to use federal funds to back faith-based programs, I was outraged, as were many other firm believers in separation of church and state.
Obama's plan, on the other hand, does what Bush's plan pretended to do. It strengthens the partnership between church and community, to help faith-based programs combat social ills like poverty. And most importantly, Obama's plan WILL NOT give federal money to any program that has the intention to proselytize, or will use religion as a basis to hire or not hire someone.
I have two professions. One of them -- a research academic specializing in language, discrimination and ideology -- has been stagnant for the last years. My PhD is in linguistics, and I taught for ten years at the University of Michigan. For the last eight years I have been writing fiction full time. Which I still do, but just recently I agreed to revise a non-fiction book I wrote for Routledge ten years ago. It's called English with an Accent: Lanugage, Ideology and Discrimination in the U.S.
It's a well known book in academic circles and still the standard text in undergraduate courses on related topics. It is the pinnacle of my academic career. It has been called a landmark book. And it's very out of date.
I'm writing about critical language studies here because in my experience, even open-minded socially liberal people are under-informed about the less visible role language plays in maintaining the dominant ideology.
I'm also writing because revising English with an Accent, I have to solicit a lot of opinions from a lot of people. This was much more difficult when I was first writing the book eleven years ago. Now I can set things up on the internet and get a wider range of opinions and discussion.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who previously said the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, has announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages.
You ever have one of those moments where you come to the realization that there is a real injustice occurring and that it is necessary to finally stand up and say something about it? Well Brenda Diggs, an English teacher at South High Community School in Worcester did and finally expressed the words that so many students in urban high schools have wanted to say for years. She wrote this letter to the Telegram and Gazette and finally outed the media for its discriminatory practices:
"Beer promotion women (called locally, beer girls) exclusively sell one brand of beer in bars and restaurants. It is usual for them to have to sell one case of beer per night in return for a monthly salary averaging approx $US55 - about half the income needed to support their family. To supplement their income, about half accept propositions from tourists and local beer drinkers and exchange sex for money."
Condom use following beer drinking is low; HIV/AIDS prevalence averages 20% for the past 7 years. While, the [girls] may sell $13,000 worth of beer annually for their company, they are paid $600-$800 [annually]and cannot afford the yearly $360 cost for life-prolonging anti-retrovirals. Death follows from 3 months to 2 years after diagnosis; beer girls are replaced with new young women from the countryside, often with less than 1 hour of training.
Dana Milbank at the 
